


I Will Survive

by Annie46fic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, spn big pretzel spring fic exchange challenge, the story of a plant called Dean!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-03
Updated: 2014-05-03
Packaged: 2018-01-21 19:06:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1560845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annie46fic/pseuds/Annie46fic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Sam runs away to Stanford he finds a really ugly plant in his duffle. He calls it, 'Dean'. Can the plant survive life with the Winchesters?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Survive

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for yanyann on LJ, as part of the Spring fic Exchange on LJ's spn-bigpretzel. Many thanks to the wonderful siennavie for the amazing artwork, please follow the [link](http://siennavie.livejournal.com/24721.html) and give her the kudos she deserves.
> 
> **Original Prompt:** Dean gives Sam a plant to take care of. Something long-lasting, easy-care and easy to transport. He gave it to him as a going-away-to-collage present or in lieu of a dog, later in life, earlier in life, whatever strikes your fancy. So, now it's been some years, what happened to it? Does Sam still have it? Did it live through their life in one piece? Does it have a place in the bunker? Did it change anything? Small or big?

**On the Way to California**

 

His eyes were glued together with drying tears and his eyelashes felt uncomfortably clumped. He reached inside his duffel for something to wipe them with, and felt the sudden stab of something sharp against the pads of his fingertips.

He opened the bag cautiously; he had deliberately not packed any of his knives or any other weapon come to that, so he had no idea what had caught him. As he peered inside he could see something green lying at the bottom. It looked, suspiciously, like a cabbage, and he licked at his dry lips wondering why the hell Dean might think that now was a good time to play a prank on him.

It was late now and deadly quiet; his bus didn’t leave until 6am and he had hours to kill. Cautiously he reached into the duffel and pulled out the _cabbage_. He held it in his cupped hands for a moment and realized that it wasn’t actually a vegetable but a plant instead. It sat in a cheerfully striped pot, its odd purple tips hanging over the side. It certainly wasn’t the prettiest thing he had ever seen and he didn’t know enough about horticulture to even take a guess at its name. There was no message attached to the pot and no explanation as to why the plant was in there, but Sam honestly got it. He hugged the ugly thing to his chest and closed his stinging eyes.

“Thanks Dean,” he whispered.

**Stanford**

The plant turned out to be a Sempervivum Tectorum or common Houseleek. Sam stood it on the shelf in his dorm and stared at it for a long time. He’d looked it up on the web, and what he’d seen had made him tear up and he could almost hear Dean calling him _a girl_. In medieval times, the plant had been used to protect against decay and witchcraft. Sam sincerely hoped that he would not need to be protected from either of them but he was touched by his brother’s concern.

He called the plant, _’Dean’_ ; he told himself that it was for a joke but deep down he knew it was to temper the homesickness that he felt running thick and unexpected through his veins. He couldn’t quite understand why he was homesick, as they had never really had a home but he missed the car; the soft thrum of her under his skin, the familiar scent of motor oil and leather. He missed his dad too, although it hurt to admit it, but most of all he missed his big brother and the hole that Dean had left was the hardest to fill. 

Maybe an ugly plant wasn’t much but at least it helped a little.

 

****

 

The plant came with him when he moved in with Jess. She stared at it with ill-disguised disgust.

“I’ve seen _Little Shop of Horrors_ twice,” she said as she trailed a finger down _‘Dean’s’_ purple tips to the middle of his ugly green belly. “And I’m not going to end my life being eaten by a plant!”

“He won’t eat you,” Sam laughed and pulled her down onto his lap, tickling her neck as a distraction. “Not unless you’re a witch.”

“Do we have to keep that butt ass ugly thing here?” She was laughing then, head tipped back, hair flowing and he bit at her exposed throat, more contented than he had been in a long, long time.

“Yeah,” he replied as he slipped a hand under her t-shirt seeking her warmth. “I was actually thinking of taking a few clippings.”

That day, when he thought back on it, was one of the happiest of his life.

 

****

**Jericho**

 

He wasn’t ever sure how _‘Dean’_ had managed to survive the fire but somehow it had been pulled out of the rubble intact. The pot had melted, and the earth it still stubbornly sat in was black and dry. Sam lifted it up in shaking hands and held it to his chest as tenderly as any child. Dean raised an eyebrow but said nothing, concentrating on casing what was left of Sam’s first and only home.

Afterwards, though, Dean drove him to the nearest hardware store where he bought a pot decorated with rainbows.

“For you to replant it,” he said, voice gentle. “It deserves another chance, don’t you think?”

Sam swallowed and took the pot from Dean. 

“Yeah,” he said, wiping at his eyes and hoping his brother didn’t notice. “It deserves another chance.”

**Road-tripping**

The plant seemed to thrive despite the fact it spent most of its life under the Impala’s backseat. Sam made sure he watered it on occasion and tried to keep it in as much light as possible. Soon though it got lost in with all the other junk that Dean slung onto the backseat, and both brothers forgot about it as they searched for their father and the demon that had haunted them their whole lives.

 

****

**The road to Cold Oak and beyond**

The plant, it seemed, was a hardy little thing. It survived the Impala’s run-in with a demon and ended up sitting on Bobby’s windowsill where it grew like a weed. In early summer it blossomed, pink flowers growing from its once ugly leaves. Sam liked the fact that the plant was always there to greet him when they swung by Bobby’s junk yard, and he always made sure he gave it a little pat, and sometimes brought it plant food as a _treat_.

After Cold Oak things changed; Bobby rode with them more often than not and the plant appeared back under baby’s restored leather seats. The plant spent Christmas with them, came on every road trip and lived a hundred or more Tuesdays along with Sam.

He considered leaving it on Dean’s grave; a sort of guardian until he could get his brother back from hell. He was drunk when he stood at the graveside, dirt under his nails; throat sore with crying. The plant was still as ugly as ever and the rainbow pot looked innocuous against the turned earth. He wanted to vomit or to scream but he did neither. Instead, he picked up the horrible little plant in its stupidly cheerful pot, got into the Impala and hit the road.

Ruby never saw the plant; it stayed in the Impala, was still there when Dean got back from hell, an angel’s mark on his arm. Things went a little scary after that with Sam determined to kill Lilith, and Ruby determined to help him. He thought of little else but his quest, gripped hard as he was in the clutch of addiction, needing blood almost as much as he needed food or air. He didn’t drive the Impala then, and the only thing in the trunk of his stolen car was a nurse’s body.

Lucifer rose and they tried everything in their power to stop him. Sam was back in the Impala again but he didn’t even consider what might be in the back seat. He almost lost his brother to Michael but in the end it was him who said, _‘Yes’_ and when he jumped into the pit he was sure it would be forever.

 

**** 

**Brothers again**

Dean, it seemed, had kept _Dean_ the plant in the attic of Lisa’s house. Apparently it was common in European countries (so Lisa said) and offered a certain amount of protection to the residents within. Sam didn’t see it the first few times he came around, standing beneath the flickering street lamp and staring at his brother seemingly happy in his domestic bliss. Soulless Sam cared about as much about plants as he did everything else. No doubt he had no use for them, so _Dean_ didn’t make an appearance until they went in search of Dragons. Sam was searching for his laptop when he saw the familiar rainbow pot shoved unceremoniously under the backseat, battered pink flowers trying desperately to bloom. 

“You still have this old thing?” He asked Dean who was tapping impatiently on the wheel, green eyes sharp as they turned to look at Sam, softening with obvious affection as soon as they made contact.

“Reminded me of you,” Dean’s answer was short and without sentimentality but Sam couldn’t hold back a smile all the same.

**Living a normal life?**

It wasn’t until he moved in with Amelia that he found the plant again. 

This time, he mused, it would have a proper home, and he placed it on a table next to the window so that it could thrive in the almost constant sunlight. He made sure it was high enough so that Riot didn’t chew on its leaves and he watered it almost daily. Sometimes, when things got really hard, he would talk to it, talk until his voice was hoarse and his eyes stung with tears of loss and frustration. If Amelia wondered about it, about him, she never said, and Sam was grateful for her silence.

He told himself he was happy; the plant on the table represented his domesticity. It was only the second home he had ever known, a sudden and unexpected permanency. He had everything a _normal_ person needed. He had a house, a girl, a dog and a job. He thought he should be happy, but somehow happiness seemed to be just that one touch away. He had just what he had always wanted and yet some vital part of the picture was missing.

Then he found Dean and lost Amelia, and there they were, back on the road again. Dean was bitter that he hadn’t bothered to look for him and Sam had no real words to explain why. Kevin’s constant pleas for help hadn’t helped the situation and when Sam met Benny for the first time things went rapidly south. They hunted together because it was what they did, but Sam wasn’t used to being transient again and he longed for the quiet domesticity of his previous _life_. He wondered how many times Dean would breeze back into his life and disrupt everything but he knew, deep down, that it didn’t matter because, in the end, he would always follow Dean.

The plant was beneath the seat when they found Castiel again; it was beneath the seat when Sam chose Dean, it stayed there when they bonded in Moondoor and it was there when the Golem came stomping over to investigate. It was after that that they found the bunker and their lives would never be the same again.

 

****

**Home**

So much time has passed since Dean came and got him at Stanford; he feels it in his bones sometimes as he cleans the kitchen, the ache in his knee, the pains in his back, the searing stomach pain that comes and goes an unwelcome side effect of having an angel inside of you.

The angels went back to heaven long ago; Castiel led them upwards while they watched in awe. Gadreel wasn’t among them having met his fate long before and Metatron was nowhere to be found. Dean once suggested looking for him but Sam shook his head gently.

“We retired – remember?”

The bunker is home now; it isn’t quite the dream house with the white picket fence and a garden. They don’t have a dog or a cat or any pet to speak of, there isn’t a porch swing or a grill on the patio but it doesn’t matter. Sam no longer yearns for such things. He knows what he can and can’t have, and he is content.

Dean needs almost constant care; the mark of Cain left him weak and broken. Abbadon died at his hands but Crowley is still the King of Hell. It should gall them but it doesn’t. Time passes and it does, indeed, heal wounds. Sam is testament to that.

As a _retirement_ project Sam builds an indoor garden; he uses all the knowledge he has gleaned from books, propagators and bright warm lights, fertilizer and plant food, and copious amounts of holy water because you can never be too sure. The day he finishes he brings Dean down to the great unveiling and, despite his brother’s grumblings, he can’t wait for Dean to see what he’s done.

_Dean_ the common houseleek takes pride of place; it has been in his life almost as long as the _real_ thing and is just as stubborn. Its will to survive is incredible, and the fact that it still blossoms takes Sam’s breath away.

“I can’t believe you still have that thing.” Dean’s legs are shaky but he kneels down anyway and runs his hands reverently over the plant’s ugly purple tipped leaves. “It still looks more like a cabbage than anything.”

“You bought it for me,” Sam states, explanation enough. “It always reminded me of you.”

“Could you be anymore gay?” Dean’s laughing but his eyes are soft. He wraps his arms around Sam and leans on his shoulder. “In Croatia, the common name for it is "Čuvarkuća.” He tightens his grip. “In English, it means _Home Guardian_ , he says. “I kinda’ liked that.”

Sam stares at him for the longest of moments; there is a warmth in his gut that radiates outwards and he has no words. They have been through a lot, the two of them, but their own little guardian has been through it with them. He wants to laugh like Dean did, to tease and say that they never really had a home to guard, but he knows that he’d be wrong to think like that. Home, they say, is where the heart is, and his heart has always been with Dean.

Sometimes they’ve had bitter fights, both of them had died or been lost on numerous occasions, they’d loved and lost, and grief had been a constant and almost overwhelming emotion, but now, now they were truly home and their guardian was home with them.

“You know . . . .” Dean was smirking now. “I’ve been reading _‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’_ , that has one kick ass sexy gardener in it too.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “It’s kinda’ early but maybe you could be my Mellors.”

Sam couldn’t hold back the laughter then; he wrapped his arms around Dean’s neck and brought them both toppling down weakly, almost flattening the _Dean_ plant, as they kissed writhing excitedly amongst its leaves.

 

It had survived so much and Sam was certain that it would certainly survive this and he said as much to his brother as he kissed him stupid.

End


End file.
